Thank you so much for such a helpful reply, mroot! I’ll check out all the links and cross reference my trees.
Great advice about the brown rot and the honeymoon period. I’ll definitely keep that in mind and will be on the lookout for signs.
Time to get on the spraying schedule!
Thanks again,
Anya
Great picks on the pawpaws. There are many other good ones out there, check out Jerry Lehman’s varieties too.
The reference section has spray schedules as mentioned above, they are extremely helpful in determining what route to take. I HIGHLY recommend planting pollinator gardens with thin leaved mountain mint, asters, and other native pollinator plants and trees to attract beneficial wasps and other insects good at keeping the pests at bay.
There are great (many free) book recommendations on the forum.
Regarding rust, I’ve come to the conclusion that properly timed Immunox is the answer. I don’t like using synthetic sprays but will do so when organic options is aren’t as effective.
Welcome to the forum! Make sure to use the search feature for finding topics that might have been covered and feel free to resurrect old threads with similar questions.
I love the pollinator gardens idea! I already have a small batch of mountain mint, I’ll think I’ll spread it around this year. Thank you!
And noted on the Immunox. I’m still going to debate keeping that Golden Delicious or giving up on it. Might try Immunox at least one season and see how it goes. Thanks!
Hi, I’m at the top part of Va. Your biggest problems will be brown rot on stone fruit and rots on apples. Without spraying the stone fruits you are not going to see much fruit. Apples also have bad rot problems , but you can pick varieties that are somewhat immune to it. McIntosh is one of the worst in the rot department. The other items you are growing should be mostly trouble free. I would consider adding pears. They are pretty easy to grow spray free. Stone fruits are pretty difficult in our environment and before I started spraying whole crops would be lost. Apple will need some spray as well, but no where near as much as stone fruit. I agree with the above on Montmorency. It gets rot, but not always a total loss. Deer are also a major problem. I have to cage my trees until they are tall enough or they will destroy them. Bucks also like to rub on them which does major damage. Don’t worry you will figure it all out.
Thank you for your reply! We put up some mesh wire netting as a temporary fence around the whole space, otherwise deer basically live in our yard. Also bears! So I think by the time we really have fruit, I’ll have to figure out some electric fencing option.
I wonder if because of the sloped mountain terrain, maybe conditions will be more favorable and help avoid some problems… could be wishful thinking though. Thank you for reminding me about pears! I’ll try to find some space for them without overcrowding. Love pears!
Thanks again,
Anya
I’m surprised to see links to university extension advice posted before guiding you to our forum guides section. There is information there I consider much more useful than what you will get written by some advisor that has no experience managing fruit trees in a home orchard setting and usually gets their info from information compiled for commercial growers who must have pristine fruit that is grown under heavy pest pressure due to the extent of commercial production. Once a pest finds one tree in an orchard useful to it, it tends to spread throughout the orchard.
Your pictures showed some pretty bad cedar apple rust- bad cases can cause complete early defoliation of apple leaves which can in itself destroy the crop. It is certainly reducing your annual growth already.
Never ask two experts on a topic the same question.
Thank you so much, @alan ! Those links are perfect. I read through the low-impact spray schedule and will move on to the other articles as well. Super helpful.
As somebody else in VA, you very likely to have cedar apple rust, oriental fruit moth, and plum curculio problems.
I have yet to see an apple make it to ripening, but I’m in Richmond. My best performance here has been blueberries, figs, and (strangely) plums but I haven’t seen brown rot yet either. If you are up in the mountains you may have better apple performance.
It’s too hot for me to grow currants and gooseberries, but you might be just cool enough to get away with it. The summer humidity and temps drive various leaf diseases that defoliate them by September.
@TheGrog I’m really hoping the mountain environment will do some magic, though if I’m honest with myself, I doubt the temperature difference is significant. But the fact that we’re on a slope and get pretty strong sun, maybe that’ll help… otherwise it feels pretty overwhelming, the heat, humidity, and pest pressure. My currants got sick with something last year. I couldn’t even imagine that gooseberries might not make it! I just planted mine last spring. I wonder about the walnut now, and the hazelnuts. Time will tell. Thanks for your reply!
Also in Virginia but in the Shenandoah Valley 6b/7a. Yes to the issues above, but I have had good success with Surround if applied early enough. Bagging might also be a good option for you.
For me an early copper spray, followed by dormant oil is important to get off to a good start. I don’t find that scab or CAR is so detrimental to trees that they don’t recover. A PC scar on an apple that makes it to harvest just tells me that the PC didn’t win.
This past year, just when I thought I was headed down home stretch, birds came in and pecked at least half of the apples on certain trees. The more open the tree, the more the apple seemed to stand out, and the more pecks I got. Then I decked out the tree with Christmas tinsel, motion whirligigs and pie tins.
Sometimes I feel like Elmer Fudd hunting wabbit.
Welcome!
Hello! I think we are likely nearby each other! (I’m just west of Staunton and Harrisonburg if you know where those places are)
I also have a slopey place, deer, a bear, and cedar-apple rust!
I am pretty new to all of this as well, so if you look you will see a bunch of the questions I ask might be relevant to you - except that I have both old and young trees.
@benthegirl We’re closer to Front Royal, but I bet we do have similar conditions. Having a mix of young and old trees sounds like a dream! How tall and old are your old trees? We got our place three years ago and spent most of the time clearing the wild growth, unfortunately no fruit trees there to speak of. Even though our mountain is actually called Apple Mountain!
I’ll definitely check out your posts and will be on the lookout for your questions in the future. Oh! I’m curious what you do against the bears. Do they come for the fruit? An acquaintance whose land borders Skyline Drive had a bear come for her young apple tree’s harvest and completely break the tree in the process :-/
@Rosdonald Tinsel sounds like a fun idea! Though I’m sure it was no fun to have to try to beat the birds to your fruit. I’m trying to brace myself and mentally preparing to give up some fruit to the wildlife. But I need to slow down and actually get to a harvest, first!
When I went to a NAFEX meeting (north american fruit explorers) about 20 years ago a tour included a trip to a farm up in the hills above Charlottesville where the owner grew no-spray Golden Delicious apples for organic cider he sold. The apples were good enough to eat and old strain yellow d. often produces fruit here without spray.
The point is, it is bound to be easier to grow apples in the hills of VA than in the more humid and warmer areas closer to the ocean. Also that variety makes a big difference in the difficulty of realizing harvests.
Count it as wishful thinking. I’m on a mountain side about a half hour north of you. I try to go as spray free as I can, but it’s just not possible for stone fruit and to a certain degree apples. That’s why I advised pears. They love it here and have very few problems. On your currents and gooseberries I would not put much thought to them. Mine look pretty drunk by the end of the season every year. Each year they come back just fine and produce a crop. That’s normal.
I’ve got some in-ground blacks that do ok, but only 2 left out of probably a dozen varieties and they still suffer in the fall.
The gooseberries & colored currants are in pots and get afternoon shade, and yet don’t do too much more than cling to life. I get a handful of currant strands and maybe a dozen or two gooseberries across several plants.
There are a lot of apple orchards at higher elevations in the west half of the state, but the question is always ‘how heavy do they spray?’ Apples stay on the tree so long that they accumulate a lot of damage when you only have a few trees too, and that’s not really a problem that a full orchard has either.
Front Royal is not so far away and I have seen apple mountain on the map!! @Rosdonald is close to me but more costal and has totally been my inspiration - so definitely pay attention to what she says!
Also, get your soil tested. Most of VA is all acidic, but in my area (ridge and valley which extends north of here which can include you) it tends to be basic with high alkalinity. That can cause a number of problems including boron issues, iron chlorosis… ugh.
Here is one I wrote to someone else just getting started: benthegirl’s response to a new orchard dweller.
As far as the spraying goes, I’m on a mountain and sadly, it’s not better. Oddly, my apples are the saddest things. Everyone said it’d be the stone fruit. However, I have old varieties of apples which aren’t doing any favors. I didn’t spray enough this year or last and I would be embarrassed to send you any pictures. My apple trees looked like a giant rust/scab spot. My peaches fared a bit better by some miracle that I don’t expect to be repeated and I plan to spray them on a schedule this year.
I do have a lot of pear trees, which other than the neglect, I think are doing well. 
They have a bit of a mite problem but I hope to have that solved. They had a bit of a blossom blast/cold problem… I suppose you’ll read all about it when I post this year! Anyhow, they seem the most hardy.
It is!!! My house is a dream. When I got my fixer-upper I knew it had fruit trees in a block, but only a few were really visible. I always wanted fruit trees, but had never tried before. It’s been a huge learning curve. I found I really enjoy caring for them and learning about them. I also started cleaning up the property and have found many, many more fruit trees.
I have planted peach (because I love peaches and peach trees aren’t as productive when they’re older- so I figured why not.) and fig (because there weren’t any here and they are bleh from the store- I love figs and I wanted to see if some hardy varieties would work. ) I also planted raspberry and blackberry.
My biggest problems are: neglected older trees, deer, racoon, and squirrel. Probably in that order. Look up @alan’s squirrel baffles for inspiration against the animals. If you can realistically fence out these things than that’s helpful.
I got 3 new peach trees and after looking at my older trees and reading @alan’s posts I promptly ignored the traditional advice to start the scaffolds at 1.5-3 feet. All of mine are going to start higher. Squirrels and racoons jump. I watched a deer stand on it’s hind legs and eat a shoot off an apple tree while my 50lb dog barked and ran at it (the deer laugh at my dog).
Well, the bears haven’t tried to get at my small trees. They’d have a pretty sad time with a tiny harvest on my tiny new trees. Bears have a pretty big range and only swing by my house once in a while. All my neighbors and I are very careful about keeping trash locked up and such- so there isn’t much incentive for them to hang around.
I’d try to find out who your conservation officers are (there is only one in my area) and see if they have any advice and/or can let you know if you need to worry. I feel pretty convinced that unless the bear was desperate (in my area) it wouldn’t bother trying to get past a decent fence. My trash enclosure and compost bin aren’t exactly high security and the bear has never bothered. It did like my mulberry tree.
I came from the rural west where bears were very present and very big. In one town I lived in you could see them every single evening hanging around dumpsters. Everyone just ignored them. When I lived in Wyoming, I saw them regularly from a distance (and would have been terrified if they’d shown any interest in coming closer). So I think the way that bears get treated has a lot to do with location.
When I showed my bear pics from my security cam to the conservation officer here, he was just happy that the bear didn’t have mange - which I guess is a problem around here. None of my neighbors seemed at all concerned and just mentioned not to leave trash out (and most of them raise livestock or poultry) so I wasn’t worried either.
@TheGrog thanks for the reply about your plants! I guess only time (and care on my part) will tell if the gooseberries and currants will live up to my childhood memories… at least I can always make tea with the black currant leaves, so that’s already a win! I’m also planning to plant seaberries… will share progress reports (if any) here.
